


while the other loves the night

by paperiuni



Series: Trifles from Thedas [4]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Developing Relationship, Discussion of Canon-Typical Homophobia, Drama, M/M, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-08
Updated: 2015-08-08
Packaged: 2018-04-13 15:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4528179
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dorian hasn't had the luxury of openness, while Bull makes openness his byword. They don't always meet in the middle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	while the other loves the night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Iambic](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/gifts).



> Prompt fic from tumblr, posted here due to its unexpected length. Thanks to Sam and Toft for help and cheering. ♥
> 
> Prompt: Dorian x Bull, " 'I'm sorry' kiss"

Dorian ambles down to the upper bailey with his head in _De Civitate Umbrarum_ , which Josephine procured for him via what must have been the first stirrings of the Maker's return. This whole dog-infested country seems impervious to the spread of higher learning, so he must thank the ambassador for her timely miracles with Tevene books.

In the doorway of the Herald's Rest he narrowly avoids colliding with a bustling dwarf merchant--"Your pardon, messere," drifts up to him in a thick Tantervale accent. The tavern is middling full, and in the corner an elven scout is dancing on a table.

"Be a dear and find me something to eat, if you would," he tells Maud, who's peeking at the prancing scout over the counter. Cabot is not in evidence; she's running the bar alone. "It seems everyone in the kitchens had gone to sleep."

"It's well past the evening bell, m'lord." Her tone is not unkind, but holds a reminder that not all have the luxury of late hours. The flowing and ebbing noise around them belies some of that fact. He can hear the Chargers laughing, his ear picking out their voices. Sera, Varric and Blackwall have taken up a table to the right of the counter.

Dorian has a heap of research volumes as high as his arm is long. Food and drink, and back to the library with him. He rubs a knuckle on his temple. Tension is knotting there. However, they're waiting for their next outing, and he'd do best to put the lull to good use.

Good use of the variety that benefits the Inquisition at large. He has also, as of late, discovered fascinating avenues to loosen his tensions. Most of them seem to wind down into Iron Bull's bed. Occasionally, even into his own bed. In Bull's company.

He mumbles thanks to Maud for the bowl of pottage she sets on the counter, topped with a crust of barley bread, and tries to lose himself in another dense passage of text. _The metaphysical nature of the Veil has been a perennial subject of debate since the times of the Somniari. Its fundamental subjectivity has made generalising on individual observations a challenging--_

No, no, no. He skips past the introductory paragraph, trying to find the meat of the scholar's hypothesis. He hopes the copy is a complete one. The _Liberalum_ in the library is missing an entire folio.

"There you are, 'Vint. Hey, Varric, you owe me a royal!"

Bull has a subtler tread for when he wants to move quietly. Now his boots scuff on the reeds carpeting the floor, but Dorian jumps all the same. Bull stops next to him by the counter, waiting for Maud to dart up to him.

"Does it count if he didn't even bother with a good evening when he walked in?" Varric retorts.

Dorian lowers his book, decidedly ruffled. "I toil over research that could mean our lives out there, and you bet on my absences from this den of vices and vagabonds?"

" _That_ sounds a lot like you're going to be paying up, not me, Tiny."

Bull sets Maud to ferrying fresh tankards of ale for his company, then turns back to his verbal sparring with Varric. "Ah, he's just running his mouth. He knows I like it. Builds anticipation."

The book slaps against the countertop. Dorian almost pitches it into his bowl. "I beg your pardon. What, precisely, is this wager about?"

The beat of silence tells its tale. Dorian finds his fingers gripping the rim of the counter, knucklebones in stark relief.

"How many nights until he beds you again," Sera pipes up, in spite of abrupt hushing sounds from Varric.

Heat suffuses his throat. That is mortifying in itself, that leap of panic in his gut that won't heed the fact that he is _not_ in Tevinter, and the Herald's Rest is the furthest thing from a magister's court.

Blackwall clears his throat too loudly. "Sera? That time in Amaranthine, with the curd cheese and the bann's daughter?"

Oh, to be saved from one oaf's indiscretions by another's attempts at subtlety. Dorian's jaw feels stuck, as if the words he wants to speak were nails hammered into his tongue.

 _Fasta vass_. He fumbles for his book. The stew with its long-simmered scent of basil and thyme suddenly turns his stomach.

"Hey." Bull's hand curls up towards his arm, the one left bare by his vest. "Put the book down for one drink. Or a drink and a stop upstairs." His fingers land on the back of Dorian's shoulder. "Crap, you're stiff as yesterday's corpses."

 _What a fetching turn of phrase_ , Dorian almost manages. Bull's touch is light, companionable, but Dorian jerks himself back.

"Must you?" There is a tirade in his burning throat. Three of his--his _friends_ are a step away pretending the story they've told and heard ten times has them engrossed.

This is not Tevinter. The most Tevinter thing here is _him_ , and Maker forbid that this place ever let him forget it.

He sees Bull's face fall. It doesn't stop him.

"You made a bet with the dwarf. On the topic of--of our--"

"Listen," Bull begins, in that steady and soothing tone he'll use when Dorian is coming down hard from a flood of sensation, or getting too tangled in himself, or in need of a pinnacle amid the pleasure.

Maker, he hates to hear it now. _If you read me so well, how does this not sink in?_

"Please speak a little louder." Dorian takes a step back. "If you ask nicely, maybe Vivienne will lend you her balcony so you can shout at the whole castle. First it's the maids, now the haughty Tevinter mage, swooning at your prowess."

He hisses that last part, too choked for more volume. Maud is staring at him, the tankard in her hand overflowing.

He turns blindly to the door and makes a striding escape into the torchlit darkness.

*

The library is cool and still. Across the rounded gallery, Dorian can hear the scratching of Helisma's quill. The light of her candle lanterns flickers ruddily on the wood of the columns.

 _Magnificently done, Dorian_. He left his supper, his book and a good chunk of his dignity in the tavern. He should tidy away his notes and find his bed. He can't even wrap up today's thoughts without checking one more thing in the book. Which is in the tavern. Which will be too full of sidelong glances for him to bear.

Scandal has gone arm in arm with him for the better part of his life. There was a time he courted it, relished it, took a spiteful pleasure in marring his family's exalted name every chance he got.

As if he could have punished Tevinter for the way it made him hide. This is Ferelden, and--and he gets chary glances for his accent, his impeccable sense of dress, or his casual use of magic in plain view.

Not for what he desires. Not for whom he fucks.

He braces his elbows on his writing table and drops his face against his hands. Somewhere above, a raven caws in a rookery window.

He stirs to the sound of Helisma talking in her low, articulate cadence. Another voice, a deeper one, replies, and then Dorian hears steps come around the gallery, accompanied by the muted chink of metal on every other footfall.

That gives him time to be standing up, armoured in umbrage, when Bull appears into view. A lantern on a column throws enough illumination for them to see each other.

"You left your book," Bull says. His timbre gives nothing away.

Dorian uncrosses an arm to take the cloth-bound volume from Bull. The old vellum pages spread the cover upwards, no longer lying neat together.

"I assume now comes the part where you tell me what my problem is." He smooths a hand across the cover as if he could make it stay pressed down.

"I could guess." Bull eyes what Dorian thinks of as his guest chair, a sturdy pinewood seat the Inquisitor often borrows, but he stays on his feet. "It's what I do. Put things together and draw a conclusion."

"You want applause now? My bedroom noises don't cut it anymore?"

The flash of hurt in Bull's expression should be a victory. Dorian wonders that he even picks up on the emotion, there and then gone.

"I could guess," Bull says again. "I got it wrong the last time, though. That's pretty clear."

Dorian's vexation flags some, his next breath tangled with surprise. "Well, good."

The high circles of Tevinter society made it easy to nurse his self-righteous outrage. They were never contrite. Neither did his parents seem to be, after any of the countless arguments they had on the subject of his proclivities.

"You know it stops at the door, right?" Bull turns his head. His horn chafes across the backs of the books, and he halts. "Whatever we do in bed."

"Of _course_ ," Dorian bites off, on reflex. "I'm not slow. And you're hardly my first." There are certainly expanses of debauchery Bull has opened up for him, but he is no callow youth anymore.

"Not that I've spotted much swooning at all," Bull continues, dares to joke, and Dorian nearly rouses at him again. "Didn't think you were into that shit. Those romances the Seeker reads when she thinks nobody's looking."

"I--" Dorian whirls to look at him agape. "What are we talking about?"

"Your problem."

"Via the vehicle of Cassandra's questionable taste in literature."

"Until you talk straight." Bull takes the chair at last, unfolding his left leg. Dorian leans against the table and tests Bull's words.

"I don't know how it is with Qunari," he says at length. "I'll hazard that _you_ aren't a representative example. But I'm sure the castle rumour mill has ground the grain of my visit to Redcliffe."

"The thing about the family retainer."

"That was a ruse." Dorian can't pitch into a thorough explanation of the meeting here. Only the Inquisitor knows, and she's thankfully held her peace. "In any case, the final spark to the bonfire of why I am here were my... preferences. My family disapproved. As does most of the nobility in Tevinter."

Bull makes a wry, rasping, "Ah", and says no more.

Dorian has a sense of standing upon a precipice. Behind him are the ballrooms and colonnades of the north, the ancient, strangling traditions. Before him are only the shadowed library and the puzzle of Bull's silence.

"So it has to stop at the bedroom door," Bull says.

"If you ever make it _there_." Sleeping quarters tend to be sheltered, secluded places. Much better to have somewhere with a nearby exit. The custom of Minrathusian magisters to open parts of their estates for their guests to wander is meant to flaunt their wealth, but it also creates dark corners that are easy to occupy for a moment.

The Inquisition's been in Skyhold for almost a year. That's enough time to see how love and lust play out across the crowded community in the fortress. Orlesians treat most liaisons lightly, as the diversions they are. Fereldans are quicker to grumble at breaches of their penchant for privacy. Still, Sera's stories of her romps raise brows over their candour and freedom, not because each and every one of them features a woman.

"It's rough, that. Leaving the past where it belongs."

"Impossible, sometimes." Honesty. A terrible trait, but one Bull seems to inspire in him.

"You want to stop?" Bull gestures towards Dorian, then himself. "Or... just want me to stop?"

Dorian swears to every sleeping, silent god that it costs Bull to ask that. Something tugs in his chest. He's heard so many other variations.

_I have to go. Don't ask for me anymore._

_Remember, you don't know me._

_I'll look for you in the autumn. If fortune favours us both._

Bull is a soldier among soldiers. Nowhere does crude repartee fly faster or thicker, including that on past and present tumbles. Dorian is fine, just fine, listening to Varric speculate on whom their brave Inquisitor's quiet affections will finally land-- _you can't be a hero without a love story, Sparkler_ \--or laughing along when Josephine regales them with a tasteful bit of Orlesian bedroom politics.

He doesn't know how to apply that liberty to himself.

"Bull--" A shake of his head. A pressure in his ribs. "No. But I want you to give me time."

Would it not be something, to unbuild these walls? To tease and be teased with the knowledge that it is over something good, something that pleases rather than shames?

Sentimental rot. Over Iron Bull of all people.

Bull's hand skims the side of his own, a wordless, careful question. Dorian unfurls his fingers and lets them slip into Bull's palm.

"All right." Bull meets his gaze, his one eye dark and grave. "Sounds like a new rule. The inside of that door belongs to just you and me, then."

The movement slow--Dorian could halt it any moment he wished--Bull bends his head and kisses the heel of his palm. Not the back, as if in a courtesy, but the skin above his pulse, then the dip in the middle.

Dorian cups the side of Bull's face with his free hand, and breathes easier. "Accepted." He means both the offered terms and the apology layered into that kiss, that bowed head.

Bull smiles as he looks up. The darkness in the library deepens as Helisma blows out her candles beyond the stacks, their glow gone into the soft scent of smoke.

"I think," Dorian says, coming closer, "that we could go find a door to shut in the face of the world. For a few hours."

"Guess I'm not collecting those winnings from Varric," Bull mutters against his ear. His arm settles around Dorian, his hand spread over one shoulder blade.

"By the time I am done with you--" Dorian sinks his teeth in Bull's neck in a brief, wicked nip, just to hear his breath tatter, "--you will not _remember_ that wager."

Bull laughs, and pulls him up for a kiss. Easing into his hold, Dorian goes.

**Author's Note:**

> Dorian's book title means roughly "The City of Shadows", which is a cant of the head to Augustine of Hippo and seemed like an interesting title for a book on the Fade.
> 
> Comments are, as always, most welcome.


End file.
